Daima's knees buckled.
His vision blurred.
His body screamed at him to stop, to rest, to accept that he had done the impossible and proven his point.
No.
The single word echoed through his consciousness like a thunderclap.
I didn't die on my bedroom floor arguing about power scaling just to KNEEL.
I didn't get reborn as Daima Goku just to fire ONE attack and collapse.
I didn't push Beerus to seventy percent just to fall short at the finish line.
His legs trembled, threatening to give out completely. The white-eyed transcendence was fading, his violet aura flickering like a candle in a hurricane. Every cell in his body was begging for mercy.
He denied them.
"What..." Beerus's laughter died in his throat as he watched Daima's trembling form. "What are you doing? Your body is finished. You've proven your point. There's no shame in—"
"NOT... DONE..."
The words came out as a growl, barely human, more animal than anything else. Daima's small hands pressed against the ground, pushing, FORCING his body upward.
"He's still trying to stand?" Gohan said in disbelief. "After that attack? That should have depleted every ounce of energy he had!"
"It DID deplete every ounce of energy he had," Whis observed, his eyes narrowing. "Which means what he's drawing on now isn't energy in the conventional sense. It's something else entirely."
Regular Goku watched his dimensional counterpart with an expression that had shifted from excitement to something deeper—recognition.
"He's not giving up," Goku said quietly. "No matter what. He'd rather die than stop fighting."
"That's STUPID," Vegeta snapped, though his voice lacked its usual venom. "Fighting past your limits is one thing, but this is suicide! His body can't handle—"
"Since when has that ever stopped a Saiyan?"
Vegeta had no response to that.
Inside Daima's fragmenting consciousness, a war was being waged.
Derek Thompson—the part of him that was still the Twitter warrior, the power scaler, the analytical mind—was screaming at him to stop. The calculations were clear. His energy reserves were at zero. His body was breaking down at the cellular level. Continuing to fight would result in permanent damage, possibly death.
You proved your point, Derek's voice reasoned. You pushed Beerus to seventy percent. That's more than Super Saiyan God Goku ever did in the original timeline. You WON the argument. You can rest now.
But there was another voice. A voice that had been growing stronger ever since Daima had stopped fighting like a scholar and started fighting like a warrior. A voice that wasn't Derek Thompson at all.
It was Daima Goku.
The REAL Daima Goku.
Rest? that voice laughed. REST?! Since when does a Saiyan rest in the middle of a fight?!
My body is breaking? the voice continued. Good. That means I'm pushing hard enough.
My energy is depleted? the voice roared. Then I'll CREATE more!
I am DAIMA GOKU. I pierced through THREE REALMS with a single attack. I fought demons and gods and monsters that would make Beerus look like a KITTEN.
And you think I'm going to stop NOW?!
The two voices clashed inside him—Derek's logic versus Daima's will. Analysis versus instinct. Calculation versus pure, stubborn REFUSAL to accept defeat.
For a moment, they were perfectly balanced.
And then Daima made his choice.
I'm not Derek Thompson anymore, he realized. I haven't been since I first transformed. I was clinging to my old identity, my old way of thinking, because it was familiar. Because it was SAFE.
But safe doesn't win fights.
Safe doesn't push past limits.
Safe doesn't SOLO GODS.
He let go of Derek Thompson completely.
And Daima Goku rose.
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
Beerus's shout echoed across the devastated battlefield as Daima's body began to transform once again.
This wasn't like before. This wasn't a gradual power-up or a systematic progression through forms. This was an EXPLOSION of pure Saiyan evolution.
His body GREW. Not just larger—DENSER. Every muscle fiber compressed and expanded simultaneously, creating a frame that radiated power from every angle. He shot up from his child-sized form to full adult height in seconds, but he didn't stop there. He kept growing until he was taller than Regular Goku, taller than Vegeta, a towering figure of primal might.
Crimson fur erupted across his body—but it wasn't the same crimson as before. This was DEEPER, richer, almost black in its intensity. It covered his arms, his chest, his back, spreading in patterns that looked less like fur and more like war paint applied by the universe itself.
His hands swelled to enormous size, each finger thick and powerful, designed for delivering devastation on a cosmic scale. His tail—longer now, more muscular—whipped behind him with a life of its own.
And his hair—
His hair ignited.
Not turned red. Not shifted color. IGNITED. Flames of pure crimson energy danced across his scalp, rising upward in a blaze that never consumed itself. His eyebrows vanished, replaced by ridges of concentrated power. His eyes burned gold with crimson cores, and when he opened his mouth, light spilled out from within.
This wasn't Super Saiyan 4.
This wasn't the evolved form he had achieved earlier.
This was something that had never existed before in any timeline, any dimension, any possibility.
This was TRUE Super Saiyan 4.
And it was running at ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
"His power level is... is..." Vegeta's scouter—wait, when had he put on a scouter?—exploded on his face. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!"
"I stopped being able to measure his power output approximately three transformations ago," Whis admitted, and for the first time, the angel looked genuinely concerned. "Lord Beerus, this entity is no longer operating within normal parameters. His energy signature has become... paradoxical."
"Paradoxical HOW?"
"It's simultaneously finite and infinite. Depleted and overflowing. Mortal and divine." Whis shook his head. "He's broken the rules of power scaling entirely."
"Broken the rules?" Beerus repeated, and despite everything, he started to smile again. "Now THAT'S interesting."
Daima stood in his True Super Saiyan 4 form, every inch of his massive frame radiating power that warped the space around him. The ground beneath his feet wasn't just cracked—it was DISSOLVING, matter itself unable to withstand proximity to his energy output.
He looked at his enormous hands. Flexed his fingers. Felt the power coursing through him like a river that had broken its dam.
So this is one hundred percent, he thought. This is what happens when you stop holding back. When you stop calculating. When you just... BECOME.
He turned his gaze to Beerus, and the God of Destruction's smile faltered slightly.
"You wanted to see everything I had," Daima said, his voice resonant with harmonic overtones, as if multiple versions of himself were speaking simultaneously. "You said I reached my ceiling. You said the math didn't work."
He cupped his hands at his side again.
"Let me show you what happens when a power scaler stops doing math and starts doing DAMAGE."
"Oh no," Krillin whimpered from behind a pile of rubble. "He's going to do another one. He's going to do ANOTHER ONE."
"EVERYONE GET DOWN!" Piccolo roared, grabbing everyone he could reach and diving for cover.
Regular Goku didn't move. He stood transfixed, watching his dimensional counterpart with tears streaming down his face.
"It's beautiful," Goku whispered. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"Kakarot, get DOWN—" Vegeta started.
"No. I want to watch. I NEED to watch." Goku's fists clenched at his sides. "That's what I could become. What WE could become. I'm not going to hide from that."
Daima began charging his attack.
But this time was different from before.
The first Kamehameha had been desperate—a last-ditch effort to prove a point. It had drawn on power he didn't know he had, burning through his reserves like rocket fuel.
This Kamehameha was CONTROLLED.
This Kamehameha was DELIBERATE.
This Kamehameha was CALCULATED.
Because Daima Goku had finally understood something that Derek Thompson never could: power scaling wasn't about the numbers. It was about understanding your OWN power. Knowing exactly what you were capable of. And then EXCEEDING it.
"Ka..."
Reality shuddered.
The dimensional cracks that had begun healing from his first attack ripped open again—wider this time, bleeding light from other realms into this one. Through the tears, glimpses of impossible places flickered in and out of existence.
A world of endless red sky and black mountains.
A realm of pure mathematical concepts given physical form.
A dimension where time flowed backward and causality was merely a suggestion.
The Three Realms of the Demon Realm were bleeding through.
"Me..."
The energy between his hands wasn't white this time. It was EVERY COLOR. Shifting, flowing, cycling through the entire spectrum faster than the eye could track. White and gold and blue and red and silver and violet and colors that didn't have names because mortal eyes had never perceived them before.
"Ha..."
Beerus dropped into a defensive stance, his aura flaring to full power. Not seventy percent. Not eighty.
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
The God of Destruction's full, unrestrained power, unleashed for the first time in millions of years.
The pressure of his aura alone would have crushed any normal planet into dust. Mountains would have crumbled. Oceans would have evaporated. The very fabric of space-time would have wept at the weight of his divine energy.
But the only thing that crumbled was the ground beneath his feet.
Because Daima's power had become something that could stand equal to a God of Destruction.
"Me..."
Whis raised his staff, channeling every ounce of angelic power he possessed into a barrier around the Earth. Not Capsule Corporation. Not West City. The ENTIRE PLANET.
"This next attack," Whis said, his voice strained with effort, "will either destroy everything or prove something extraordinary. I'm genuinely uncertain which."
"WHIS!" Beerus shouted without taking his eyes off Daima. "What's the probability of survival?!"
"Calculating... UNABLE TO CALCULATE. His power output exists outside probabilistic models!"
"THAT'S NOT HELPFUL!"
"I'M AWARE!"
Daima drew his hands back fully, the sphere of impossible energy between them now larger than his entire body. It pulsed with the rhythm of multiple realities, each beat sending shockwaves that rattled the dimensional barriers.
This is it, he thought. One hundred percent. Everything I have. Everything I AM.
Every argument I ever made.
Every calculation I ever performed.
Every night I spent defending Daima Goku's honor against people who didn't understand.
It all comes down to this.
ONE ATTACK.
THREE REALMS.
AND A GOD WHO THINKS HE'S THE CEILING.
He thrust his hands forward.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The beam that erupted from Daima's palms didn't just travel through space.
It REWROTE IT.
Where the attack passed, reality itself was restructured. Matter was converted to energy and back again. Time hiccupped, skipping forward and backward in random intervals. The very concept of "distance" became negotiable.
And at the center of it all, a single beam of omnichromatic power screaming toward the God of Destruction.
Beerus met it head-on.
His hands came up, divine energy blazing, Hakai power crackling at his fingertips. He wasn't trying to deflect this attack. He wasn't trying to redirect it.
He was trying to DESTROY it.
"HAKAI!"
The word of destruction met the beam of creation—because that's what Daima's attack had become. Not just destruction. CREATION. The power to unmake and remake simultaneously. The power to pierce through realities and reshape them in its passage.
Destruction versus Creation.
Ending versus Beginning.
God versus Mortal.
They collided.
The explosion wasn't visible.
It was EVERYTHING.
For one eternal instant, the entire observable universe went WHITE. Not bright—WHITE. Every color ceased to exist except that single, absolute shade. Every being in every realm, from the lowest demon to the highest angel, felt a moment of pure, crystalline SILENCE.
And then reality SCREAMED back into existence.
When vision returned, when color resumed, when the universe remembered how to function properly, two figures remained standing in a crater that was less a geographical feature and more a wound in the planet's crust.
Beerus stood at one end, his divine aura flickering. His fur was singed. His robes were gone completely. His usually impassive face was twisted with exertion.
He was breathing hard.
He was SWEATING.
But he was STANDING.
And at the other end of the crater...
Daima stood.
His True Super Saiyan 4 form was stable—not flickering, not fading. His massive frame radiated controlled power. His crimson-black fur rippled in the shockwave-wind that still circled the battlefield. His flaming hair blazed with undiminished intensity.
He was breathing hard too.
But he was STANDING.
"You..." Beerus started, his voice rough. "You actually..."
"Matched you," Daima finished. "One hundred percent. God of Destruction at full power versus Daima Goku at full power."
He looked down at his hands—still enormous, still powerful, still crackling with residual energy.
"The power scaling was accurate."
Beerus stared at him.
Then he started laughing.
Not the amused chuckle from before. Not the delighted laugh of finding entertainment. This was something deeper—something almost JOYFUL.
"MATCHED me?!" Beerus howled. "You think that was a MATCH?!"
Daima tensed. "What do you—"
"I wasn't using one hundred percent of my DESTRUCTIVE power, you magnificent idiot! I was using one hundred percent of my DEFENSIVE power! If I had actually tried to destroy you instead of stop you, one of us wouldn't be standing right now!"
Daima processed this information.
"So... I forced a God of Destruction to go full defense?"
"YES!"
"And at full defense, we were EQUAL?"
"MORE OR LESS!"
Daima's massive form began to tremble.
Beerus thought he was about to collapse.
Instead, Daima threw his head back and LAUGHED.
It was the laugh of a man who had spent his entire previous life being told he was wrong, being mocked for his calculations, being dismissed as a delusional fanboy—and had just been proven RIGHT in the most spectacular way possible.
"I TOLD THEM!" he roared at the sky. "I TOLD EVERYONE ON TWITTER! DAIMA GOKU IS STRONGER THAN THEY THOUGHT! THE POWER SCALING WAS ACCURATE! THE CALCULATIONS WERE CORRECT!"
He pointed at the sky, at the dimensional cracks still healing above him, at the universe itself.
"WHERE ARE YOUR RATIO'S NOW, @VEGITOBLUGOAT?! WHERE'S YOUR 'L TAKE' NOW, @BEERUSSWEEPSEVERYONE?! I JUST WENT TOE-TO-TOE WITH THE ACTUAL BEERUS AND I'M STILL STANDING!"
Beerus watched this outburst with bewildered amusement. "Who are you yelling at?"
"GHOSTS! BEAUTIFUL, WRONG GHOSTS WHO DOUBTED ME!"
Whis lowered his barrier around the planet, his expression somewhere between relief and fascination. "Well. That was certainly... unprecedented."
"Unprecedented?" Vegeta's voice was hollow. He had emerged from cover, his face pale, his hands shaking. "That was IMPOSSIBLE. Mortals don't match Gods. That's not how the universe WORKS."
"Apparently," Whis replied with a small smile, "this particular mortal didn't get that memo."
Regular Goku had tears streaming down his face, but he was grinning so wide it looked painful.
"That was... that was..." He struggled to find words. "I want to DO that! I want to reach that level! Can we train together?! PLEASE?!"
Daima looked at his dimensional counterpart, still riding the high of his victory. His True Super Saiyan 4 form began to slowly recede—not from exhaustion, but from conscious choice. The power was still there, waiting to be called upon again.
"Yeah," he said, shrinking back down to adult size, then to child size, his crimson-black fur receding, his flaming hair settling back to normal black spikes. "Yeah, we can train together."
He looked at Beerus, who was still chuckling.
"But first... I think I need to sit down for a minute."
And with perfect comedic timing, Daima's legs gave out and he faceplanted into the dirt.
But this time, it wasn't defeat.
It was VICTORY.
"So let me understand this correctly," Bulma's voice cut through the post-battle silence as she surveyed the apocalyptic damage to her property. "A tiny version of Goku fell from the sky, destroyed my birthday party, fought Beerus TWICE, cracked holes in MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS, and is now lying unconscious in a crater that used to be my POOL?"
"That's... pretty accurate, yeah," Krillin confirmed nervously.
"And during all of this, no one thought to maybe move the fight AWAY from my HOUSE?"
"It happened very fast?"
Bulma's eye twitched.
"I am going to invent something specifically designed to cause Saiyans pain, and I am going to use it LIBERALLY."
Regular Goku knelt beside Daima's unconscious form, poking him gently. "Hey. Hey, other me. Wake up. I want to ask you stuff."
No response.
"He's completely exhausted," Gohan observed, kneeling on the other side. "His energy reserves are... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like he burned through everything, created more, burned through THAT, and then kept going on pure willpower."
"Is he going to be okay?" Goten asked worriedly.
"Probably? Saiyans are resilient. And if he's really another version of Dad..."
"Then he'll be fine after he eats a LOT of food," Regular Goku finished confidently. "That's how it always works!"
Beerus approached the group, his own form having returned to its normal, composed state. The God of Destruction looked down at the unconscious Daima with an expression that mixed respect, amusement, and something that might have been fondness.
"Whis. When he wakes up, I want him brought to my planet."
Everyone froze.
"L-Lord Beerus?" Vegeta stepped forward, his pride warring with his fear. "What do you intend to do with him?"
"Train him, obviously." Beerus shrugged. "He's the most entertaining fighter I've encountered in millions of years. It would be a waste to let that potential go undeveloped."
"Train him?" Whis raised an eyebrow. "My Lord, you don't train ANYONE."
"Then I'll watch YOU train him. Same difference." Beerus yawned. "Besides, I still haven't seen this Super Saiyan God form. Once the miniature Goku recovers, we can do that ritual properly and I'll have TWO interesting Saiyans to observe."
He turned to walk away, then paused.
"Oh, and someone make sure he eats something substantial when he wakes up. I want him at full power for our next bout."
"NEXT bout?!" Regular Goku's eyes lit up. "You're going to fight him AGAIN?!"
"Obviously. And then I'm going to fight YOU. And then maybe I'll have you fight EACH OTHER." Beerus's tail swished with anticipation. "So many possibilities. This is going to be FUN."
He walked off, humming to himself.
Whis lingered for a moment, looking down at Daima with a thoughtful expression.
"You know," the angel said softly, "in all my years serving Gods of Destruction, I've never seen anyone force Lord Beerus to use his full defensive power. Not once. Not ever."
He smiled.
"I think you may have just changed the trajectory of this entire universe, little power scaler. I hope you're prepared for the consequences."
With that, he floated after Beerus, leaving the Z-Fighters to contemplate the unconscious miracle lying in the crater.
Hours later, as the sun set over the ruins of Capsule Corporation, Daima finally stirred.
The first thing he saw was Regular Goku's face, approximately three inches from his own.
"HE'S AWAKE!"
Daima screamed and tried to scramble backward, only to realize he was lying in what appeared to be a hospital bed that had been set up in one of Capsule Corporation's intact rooms.
"Wha— where— how long was I—"
"About six hours!" Goku said cheerfully. "Bulma wanted to throw you out but Chi-Chi said that wouldn't be right since you're basically me from another dimension and it would be like throwing out family and then they argued for like an hour and—"
"Goku, give him space!" Chi-Chi's voice cut in. The Saiyan's wife appeared, pushing her husband aside. "You just exhausted yourself fighting a GOD. You need rest, not interrogation."
Daima blinked at her. "You're... Chi-Chi?"
"Of course I am. Who else would I be?" She studied him with a critical eye. "You look just like Goku did when he was a kid. It's eerie."
"He IS Goku," Regular Goku said. "Just from another dimension. Where he's tiny. But also really strong. He shot a Kamehameha that cracked through dimensions and made Beerus go full power and it was AMAZING and I want to learn how to do it and—"
"I KNOW, you've told me seven times already!"
Daima slowly sat up, taking stock of his body. He felt... surprisingly good. Tired, yes, but not damaged. Not broken. His Saiyan biology had apparently done its job during his unconscious recovery.
"I really did it," he said quietly. "I really fought Beerus at full power."
"You did MORE than that," a new voice said.
Vegeta stepped into the room, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He stood at the foot of Daima's bed, staring at the child-sized Saiyan with an intensity that made Daima uncomfortable.
"You achieved a form that doesn't exist in any known Saiyan lineage. You fired an attack that pierced dimensional barriers. You forced the God of Destruction to use one hundred percent of his defensive capability." Vegeta's jaw tightened. "HOW?"
Daima considered the question.
How DID he do it?
The analytical part of his mind—the part that was still Derek Thompson, even if he had let go of that identity during the battle—wanted to break it down. Calculate the multipliers. Analyze the transformation sequence. Create a spreadsheet of power progression.
But that wasn't the real answer.
"I believed in it," Daima said finally. "I spent my entire previous life believing that Daima Goku was stronger than people gave him credit for. I argued about it. I calculated it. I DEFENDED it against everyone who said I was wrong."
He looked at his small hands.
"And when I was reborn as him, all that belief became REAL. The power was already there—I just had to stop thinking about it and start BEING it."
Vegeta's eye twitched. "That's the most ridiculous answer I've ever heard."
"It's also the truth."
"I KNOW. That's what makes it ridiculous."
Regular Goku pushed forward again. "So if I believe really hard that I'm super strong, I'll get stronger?!"
"That's... not exactly how it works," Daima said. "It's more like... you have to believe that your limits aren't real. That there's always another level to reach. That no matter how powerful someone else is, you have the potential to match them."
"I already believe that!"
"Then why haven't you unlocked True Super Saiyan 4?"
Goku opened his mouth. Closed it. Tilted his head.
"What's True Super Saiyan 4?"
"The form I used at the end. The one with the black-crimson fur and the flaming hair and the giant hands."
"I don't know what any of those things are."
Daima sighed. Of course. This timeline's Goku had never even HEARD of Super Saiyan 4, let alone achieved it. That was a GT thing, and GT wasn't part of Super's continuity.
Or it WASN'T, until Daima showed up.
"Okay," Daima said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I guess we have a lot to talk about."
"YES!" Goku pumped his fist. "Training talk! Power-up talk! FIGHT TALK!"
"More than that." Daima's expression became serious. "I know things about this timeline. Things that are going to happen. Threats that are coming. And now that I've changed things by fighting Beerus..."
He trailed off, realizing the implications.
The butterfly effect.
His presence here had already altered events. The Super Saiyan God ritual hadn't happened yet. Beerus was planning to take him to his planet for training. The timeline was shifting in ways he couldn't predict.
"What threats?" Vegeta demanded. "What do you know?"
Daima looked at the Prince of Saiyans. At Regular Goku. At Chi-Chi and the others who had gathered in the doorway.
"Frieza is going to come back," he said quietly. "Stronger than ever. Stronger than Super Saiyan Blue."
"Super Saiyan what?" Goku asked.
"And after him, there's going to be a tournament. A tournament between universes. With erasure on the line."
"ERASURE?!" Chi-Chi shrieked.
"And after THAT..." Daima closed his eyes. "Things get complicated."
The room was silent.
Then Regular Goku grinned.
"Sounds like we're going to have a LOT of fights coming up!"
"Goku, this is SERIOUS—" Chi-Chi started.
"I KNOW! That's why I'm excited!" He turned to Daima, extending his hand. "Partner up with me, other me. If there's big threats coming, we'll face them together. Two Gokus are better than one, right?"
Daima looked at the extended hand.
At the earnest, innocent, impossibly optimistic face of his dimensional counterpart.
At the life he had been given—the second chance to exist as someone who actually MATTERED.
He took the hand.
"Yeah," he said, a smile spreading across his childish face. "Two Gokus are definitely better than one."
And twice the power scaling, he added mentally. Which means twice the arguments to win.
The @DaimaGokuSolos account would be proud.